


til the world turns upside down

by SummerFrost



Series: call me son (one more time) [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Imagined) Graphic Suicide, (Mentions of) Daddy Kink, Accidental Voyeurism, Age Difference, Character Study, Daddy Issues, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Eric "We Die With These Sins" Bittle, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Outing, Panic Attacks, Power Imbalance, Suicidal Thoughts, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and now i live here, i wandered into hell wearing a pair of flip flops drinking a smoothie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-23 16:12:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: Bitty flies into Montreal a day early.Or: Chanukah, a wedding, and a panic attack. Not in that order.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh read the tags and buckle up, I guess?
> 
> Endless love to blithelybonny and soundslikepenance, who dug this pit with me and built some furniture. They also betad!
> 
> Title from Hamilton.

Chanukah at Bob’s house has become a yearly tradition for Bitty and Jack. At least, whenever their schedules allow for it, which this year they do because it overlaps with Christmas and Jack has a few days off from hockey. It’s actually Bitty’s fault they almost couldn’t make it this year, because he’s supposed to be organizing a fundraiser in Jersey right now.

But Jack had been so _disappointed_ when Bitty had to miss half of the visit, and, well, things have been a little stressful at home lately, so Bitty handed off the project to his subordinates and hopped on a plane to surprise Jack at the house.

He figures he can get in a day before Jack and Bob fly in from their respective locations; Bob is apparently down in Florida right now, and Jack is finishing up a roadie before his break. It’ll be a great surprise to have the house all set up and decorated when everyone gets in, and the extra night to start preparing food will give him _so_ much more free time to spend with Jack.

And he’s about to crawl out of his skin if he spends one more day in a hotel, but those are small details.

Bitty takes an Uber from the airport to Bob’s house—it’s a downsized property from Jack’s childhood, apparently, purchased a few years after the divorce. It’s still the biggest house Bitty’s ever seen, and he has a key. The surrealism of joining a family of millionaires only hits him once or twice a year now. He twists at the engagement ring on his finger absently, and unlocks the front door.

There are sounds empty houses can make.

They can creak, and groan, and whine if the wind is shaking their old fragile bones.

Empty houses do not _thump._ They don’t moan, “Oh, fuck, baby—” and then cut off suddenly, too suddenly, when the door hinges squeak a little and Bitty shoves a gasp back down his throat.

The house isn’t empty.

Bob Zimmermann is against the wall with his head thrown back but his eyes wide open and locked with Bitty’s, and Kent Parson is on his knees.

_So much for Florida,_ Bitty thinks, a little hysterically, and pretends he doesn’t stare at the way Parson’s mouth is stuffed full with Bob’s dick and a thumb slipped in alongside, at how _tight_ Bob’s other hand is fisted in Parson’s hair.

Bob yanks Parson back by the hair, off his dick, and starts to splutter something that might be Bitty’s name, and that’s even worse because now Bitty can _see everything_ and Parson is still glassy-eyed, barely processing, by the time Bitty flees.

There’s a Christmas wreath hanging from the door for some godforsaken fucking reason. A bell jingles when Bitty slams it shut.

He walks three blocks and then calls a cab, and checks into a hotel. His skin feels like it could peel off his body and he’d still be dirty underneath. Like his blood is the thing that’s sick.

Bob doesn’t call.

 

~*~

 

_“Fuck,”_ Bob hisses, and slams a fist back against the wall. It sends a shockwave through his wrist and his bones all shake and cry with it, fragile aging things.

Kent looks up at him with a smirk plastered on his face, the kind where his lips twitch just a little to keep themselves in place. His eyes haven’t looked like this since he took that bad hit two years ago, but his voice doesn’t shake. Bob taught him better than that.

He asks, “So, should I finish, or?”

Bob drags his thumb down Kent’s lip, digging his nail in a little on the way down. He hopes Kenny can taste the blood.

 

~*~

 

Bitty makes a list of things he knows.

One. He loves Jack.

Two. There is the kind of mold you scrub off the walls and it grows back and you scrub and it grows back and it does not find its way inside your lungs even so, and there is the kind that kills you.

Three. Jack has always wanted to be just like his father.

 

~*~

 

“Eric will tell him,” Bob says. A drop of condensation rolls down the neck of his beer bottle and onto his hand.

“No he won’t,” Kent answers, and peels a strip of paint off of the porch bannister.

Bob’s fingers slip against his glass. “What makes you think that?”

Kent is staring out across the lawn, eyes tracing the silhouette of the big oak trees that back up against the property. “He’s a better person than me.”

 

~*~

 

Bitty picks Jack up from the airport, his suitcase neatly packed and his hair smelling like his usual mousse. Nothing like the hotel shampoo he scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed into his scalp until it felt like he could peel his fingernails off.

“Bits!” Jack beams when he catches sight of Bitty, pulling him into a poorly-restrained bro-hug. The gesture makes Bitty cringe every time.

He digs his fingers into Jack’s biceps and whispers, lower than anyone could hear, “Hi, honey.”

Jack pulls away and slips his hand onto a respectable place on Bitty’s back as they walk. “I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow?”

Bitty smiles, knocks his shoulder into Jack’s the way Jack likes. “I caught an earlier flight. I wanted to surprise you.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jack says warmly. “Wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Bitty grits his teeth together to lock his smile into place.

 

~*~

 

Bob makes a list of things he knows.

One. He would do anything for his son.

Two. Children do not always grow up to be better than their fathers.

Three. Bones are brittle, and they have more calcium than hearts.

 

~*~

 

Bitty knocks, this time.

Kent Parson opens the door, and Bitty has the sudden, strange thought that he’s grateful that people don’t have hackles to raise. “Hey, Zimms. Uh, hey, Eric.”

Jack’s hand tightens reflexively in the back of Bitty’s collar. “Parse?”

“Kent!” Bitty tightens his grip on his suitcase. _God,_ why the fuck didn’t Parson get the _fuck_ out of fucking Dodge? “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Eh, I was in the area,” Parson says with a shrug. His eyes are fixed firmly on Bitty, glinting and gray. “Figured I’d see my favorite Zimmermann.” He claps Jack on the shoulder. “Been a while, Zimms.”

Parson smirks. Bitty knows what his mouth looks like with a dick in it.

“Uh, yeah,” Jack says carefully, and Bitty has the distant wherewithal to be proud of him for staying so civil. “Is Papa home?”

They make their way inside as Parson answers, “Yeah, he’s out back.”

“Great, I’ll go say hi.” Jack puts his suitcase down and kisses Bitty on the cheek. “And then I need a nap, eugh.”

Bitty laughs and smacks Jack on the ass as he walks away, like he’s supposed to. He avoids looking Parson in the eye and says, “I’ll take our stuff upstairs.”

“I’ll help you,” Parson offers, and Bitty must not hide his flinch well enough because then he adds, “Uh, if that’s cool.”

Bitty draws in a slow breath. Pleasantly, he says, “You can do whatever you want, Parse,” and leaves the heavier suitcase on the ground.

Parson hefts it easily, fucking of course, and starts, “Look, about what—”

“It’s none of my business,” Bitty cuts in flatly. “I really don’t—”

“Cut the fucking bullshit,” Parson snaps, and _oh,_ oh, there it is. Bitty sidesteps into the guest bedroom, tries not to feel like he’s fleeing. Parse stalks in after him, shuts the door, locks it. “I think we blew past that part, yeah?”

_I know what you look like on your knees,_ Bitty thinks. _I know how you like it._

Parson is three extra inches and sixty pounds of thicker muscle. He has Bitty shrinking towards the wall, and his hands are shaking.

Bitty thinks, _I know you._

“How old were you?” he asks softly, his hand lifting up like he could brush against Parse’s cheek. “You were like a son to—”

_“Fuck you,”_ Parse hisses. “You don’t—you don’t—”

“Do you call him daddy?” Bitty lets himself smile, something sharp and wry. He can taste stomach acid on the backs of his teeth. “I tried that with Jack, once. He couldn’t look at me for a week. I always figured that was your fault.”

Something ices over on Parse’s face, the chill rolling off him like a physical thing. Bitty locks his spine against the shiver. “Twinky little Southern gay like you,” he says, and steps in closer. “Bet you would’ve liked that.”

Bitty can feel Parse’s breath. He laughs into it, like he’s sighing into Parse’s mouth. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Parse cups Bitty’s jaw with one hand, fingers pressing gently into the bone. “Don’t I?”

Bitty fights the urge to dig his teeth into Parse’s palm. Thinks maybe they’d both like it too much. “I’m worried about you, Parse.”

“Yeah,” Parse sneers. He drops his eyes low, drags them over the growing bulge in Bitty’s jeans and back up to his face. “You seem real fucking torn up.”

Bitty drags his teeth over his bottom lip, forces himself to meet Parse’s eyes. “If he’s hurting you—”

“You’ll what?” Parse traces the path of Bitty’s teeth with his thumb, pressing in with his nail. “Gonna take care of me yourself? We both know Jack doesn’t share.” He laughs, slips his thigh between Bitty’s legs. “That’s kinda how we ended up here.”

When Bitty breathes, his stomach brushes against Parse’s hip. His mouth is hung open, caught on Parse’s thumb, and he’s watching the way Parse’s teeth glint in the light.

“You want it,” Parse murmurs, and rocks his thigh up into the vee of Bitty’s legs. “Do it.”

Bitty closes his eyes, feels the way his blood is sizzling under his skin. There are voices drifting up from downstairs now; he can’t tell how long Jack and Bob have been inside. “Shouldn’t you be good for your daddy?” he asks, low and the most like a threat he’s ever said anything, maybe, and bodily shoves his way past Parse towards the door.

Parse grabs his wrist.

Bitty startles and turns back to look at him, mouth working uselessly. He doesn’t pull his hand away.

There’s something in Parse’s eyes that Bitty can’t describe, has no room for under his tongue. A pleading, angry thing.

Whatever Parse sees in Bitty’s face, it isn’t enough. He lets go and walks out the door and leaves it open behind him, like there’s nothing to hide.

Bitty pulls a bottle of mouthwash out of his suitcase, walks into the en suite where he calmly sets it on the sink, and vomits into the toilet.

Laughter peals from downstairs, hearty and sincere.

_Nothing to hide,_ Bitty thinks, and gargles mouthwash until he can’t feel his tongue.

 

~*~

 

Bob corners Bitty in the kitchen before dinner. “Bitty, son, can I talk—”

“Don’t call me son,” Bitty hisses, and then strings his smile up with a row of fish hooks. He’s looking at Jack from across the room, gives him a little wave. “The wedding’s not for four whole months, Bob.”

 

~*~

 

“Did Parse say something to you?” Jack mutters to Bitty halfway through dinner, while Parse is in the kitchen grabbing a fresh bottle of wine. “You’ve been, ah—”

He’s interrupted by Parse returning with a Merlot in his hand, thumbing at the cork jauntily. Bitty just smiles, though, and answers with a loud faux-pleasantness, “It’s really nothing, sweetpea. Just— _some_ people don’t know how to appreciate a classic graham cracker crust around here.”

Jack narrows his eyes at Parse across the table, hand tightening around his fork with no small amount of menace.

Bob is busy uncorking the wine, big hands fumbling with the corkscrew ineptly, and Kent just looks up at Jack and shrugs. Like, _What can you do?_

He really did complain about Bitty’s pie.

Bitty wishes, more than anything maybe, that he still had the capacity to feel angry about that. It feels beyond him, the ghost of a thing his body used to do.

He pictures the corkscrew slipping, piercing into Bob’s fat palm. Blinks the thought away, watches the splash of blood glitch in and out of his vision, bruises his fingers from how hard he digs them into the table.

These are the things his body does, now.

Bitty has an escape route planned for after dinner. As long as he keeps Jack in the same room as him, he can’t get cornered again. They’ll finish the night embroiled in petty squabbles over what someone did or didn’t say about a pie, little sniping matches and passive-aggressive dealings with chocolate coins.

Normal things, sketched out in chalk and smudged around their fingers.

It lasts until after they light the Menorah, when Bitty drags Jack into the kitchen to help him do the dishes.

“You look dead on your feet, son,” Bob tells Jack with a clap on the back, even though Bitty’s the one with bags under his eyes and a sag in his shoulders. “You should get some rest. We’ll handle the cleanup.”

Bitty clenches his jaw as Jack protests, “Dad, I’m fine. Besides, we’re almost done—”

“Exactly!” Bob wheedles. “Come on, let me spend some time with my future son-in-law. We’ll be done in no time.”

He puts a hand on Bitty’s shoulder and Bitty has to lock every muscle in his body into place to keep from flinching. His tendons stretch and threaten to pop.

Jack seems hesitant, but Bitty doesn’t know how to make his face into anything besides a smile, and Jack never really looks. Sees the flash of teeth, never considers they might be bared. So he says, “Uh, okay. I’ll see you upstairs, Bits?”

“In just a few,” Bitty promises, and kisses Jack deeply before watching him leave. Then, he shoves his hands back into the suds and scrubs, digging his nails into the sponge and resolutely avoiding eye contact with either Parse or Bob.

The silence lasts just long enough that Bitty starts to believe he might be able to outpace whatever speech they have planned.

Then Bob says, “We’ll tell him ourselves. Tomorrow, if—”

_“No,”_ Bitty hisses, rounding on him with a spray of lather from the sink, which is probably a little dramatic even for him. “You won’t.”

Parse is leaning against the wall, watching without so much as an eyebrow raise. Bob, though, splutters, “It—it won’t help if you—”

“We die with this,” Bitty says flatly. He’s still holding a plate in his hand, dripping soapy water onto the floor. “Or it kills him. I think you came close enough to doing that once.”

Bob has the same furrow in his eyebrows that Jack gets when he’s confused. “What if—”

Parse pushes off the wall and looms over Bitty, hands braced on the counter behind him. “How do we know you’ll keep your fucking mouth shut?”

“Kent,” Bob hisses, like Parson’s mouth is the problem here.

Which, actually, in a way it sort of is, and Bitty laughs in Kent Parson’s fucking face.

Parse smiles, feral and cat-like.

If Bitty dropped the plate, he wonders, would the shards spray up and reach their chests?

Parse tugs the plate from Bitty’s hands and dumps it in the sink, like maybe he can smell the hysteria creeping in. “Night, Bittle. Sweet dreams.”

Bitty shakes his head—disbelief or denial, he isn’t sure. But Parse is so close Bitty can feel him vibrate, can taste what it would be like to close a hand around his throat and kiss the air out. It hurts, and Bitty wants it, and the pain pushes back out his lungs.

There’s not much left for him to be better than.

_Little victories,_ he thinks, and pushes away.

The guest bedroom is chilled by the AC, sending goosebumps crawling up Bitty’s skin as soon as he walks inside. He strips naked anyway, clumsy and angry about it like there are layers to rip clean, and crawls under the duvet and worms himself under Jack’s arm, curved against his body and clinging to every inch.

“I love you,” Bitty whispers, voice small and shaking. “I love you so much.”

Jack is already asleep, curled around a dream.

 

~*~

 

Bitty is still awake when the sun creeps in through the window. He disentangles himself from Jack and sneaks downstairs into the kitchen. It’s lit up by the growing sunlight and the automatic coffee maker is sputtering, the pot inching towards full.

Parse finds him there, pressing his fingertips into the sides of a freshly poured mug to sear them on the heat. Birds are chirping and the weather is clear, bright.

“I was nineteen,” Parse says. “I wanted it.”

Bitty takes a sip of his coffee. It scalds his tongue. He takes another drink. “I’m sure you thought so.”

Parse shifts his weight, leans against the counter to stare out the window. “I want it now.”

Bitty reaches up to grab a clean mug from the cabinet. He pours Parse a cup of coffee and hands it over, and doesn’t say another word.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the triggers for this chapter (panic attacks, dissociation, suicidal thoughts). Dead Dove, folks.

Parse shows up drunk to the wedding, and Jack is not panicking.

He’s watching, white-knuckled, as Parse leans sloppily against Holster and laughs brashly at something Ransom says, offering a mock toast with his wine glass.

It was supposed to be a casual thing. The kind of event where pictures don’t end up in the wrong places, where nothing sends the media sniffing for a marriage certificate quietly filed away at city hall. Shitty is officiating in Papa’s backyard; everyone is dressed in their nice clothes but not their best.

Jack’s tux is still hanging in the guest bedroom, waiting for him to change into it.

Bitty is getting ready now, or maybe he’s in the kitchen with Jack’s mother, fussing with the food—Jack lost track of him a little while ago, but maybe that’s for the best. It was Jack’s idea to invite Parse. He doesn’t want to hear about how Bitty was right, that they should be staying far away from Kent Parson.

Jack is so tired of fighting.

But besides, Kenny was always the fun drunk. He organized the games of spin the bottle and truth or dare and he counted Jack’s drinks and pills, like there was some magic formula that would keep things okay and Jack floating forever.

They never did figure it out, but it was nice that he tried.

Parse laughs again and sways on his feet. He’s projecting his voice on purpose, like the pulled pin from a grenade. “Yeah, well,” he says, “it’s fuckin’ weird watching someone marry your sloppy seconds, but I mean—”

Jack slams his glass down on the nearest end table and strides over to collar him, a hand constricting around the back of his neck as he growls, “Come with me.”

Parse doesn’t even flinch, just flops backwards into Jack’s grip. His head lolls back and his eyes are dark, sharp. “Speak’a the devil.”

Ransom and Holster shoot them worried looks that Jack ignores. He practically drags Parse into the spare room, shoving the door shut behind them. There’s a thump that’s Parse slouching against the wall, his head tilted back to look at Jack—so  _ smugly,  _ Christ.

“You need to keep it the fuck together, Parse,” Jack hisses. He keeps his nails too short to cut his skin, but he feels the soreness throbbing in his palms. “You won’t ruin this day for me.”

“How could I?” Parse coos. “You’re the perfect couple, right, Zimms? None of us can touch you.”

Jack clenches his jaw.

Parse keeps talking. “Prodigal son comes home to marry his dirty little secret. And we’re all so goddamn proud of you. Happiest day of Bob’s life, right?”

“Shut the  _ fuck  _ up!” Jack stalks forward, shoving his way into Parse’s space. Isn’t sure why he does it, what he thinks it will make either one of them do. “I—Jesus, Kent, I knew I shouldn’t have let you come. Bitty  _ said.  _ But you—you don’t get to have this  _ family  _ anymore.”

Parse’s eyes go flat. He licks his lips like a predator, scenting the air. “It’s mine,” he says. “It’s my family, Jack. You clawed your fucking way out of here and I—I was the one who stayed.”

“What are you—”

“I’m the son he really wanted— _ me!” _ Parse is pushing back against Jack’s chest, practically spitting in his face. He slips in close and his words slither against Jack’s ear. “I give him things you never could.”

Jack’s lungs feel cold. He tries to push Parse away and stumbles with him, ends up bracketing him against the wall with his body curved away, heaving. “I don’t—what—?”

“He tells me how good I am,” Parse says. His smile is almost wistful. He thumbs at Jack’s collarbone. “’So fucking good for me, baby.’ Bet you’d kill for that.”

Jack swallows down the sour bile in his throat. “You’re lying.”

Parse doesn’t say anything. His smile stretches into bared teeth.

“You’re—you—” Jack stammers. He can feel his heart in his ears. “This is about me, isn’t it? You have to—you have to take  _ everything  _ from me, Parse, god  _ damn  _ it!”

Parse’s expression changes again, into some cruel bastardization of shock and amusement. Jack thinks of ventriloquists, prying open the mouths of puppets for their own entertainment. He can’t feel his throat.

“You can have it,” Jack pleads. “You—you can have me. That’s what you—what you want, right? Just never touch him again, Kenny. Don’t—please, don’t—”

“No,” Parse says, and his hands are on Jack’s face. He drags his fingers down Jack’s cheeks, pries his lips apart to scratch at his teeth. “No, I—he loves me more than you ever did. He  _ wanted  _ me when you left and I—”

_ “What?”  _ Parse moves forward and Jack shoves him back again, pinning his hands for a split second—dropping them like he’s been burned. “Parse—how— _ Kenny,  _ how  _ long?” _

Parse laughs, humorless. “Why don’t you ask your boy?”

Jack’s lungs are cold. Cold, cold, too cold to speak and he pulls out all the icicles to wheeze bloody air and say, “Bitty doesn’t—”

“I bet he sees your daddy when he looks at you,” Kent says. “What’s that say about him, that he still touches you?”

Jack’s fist blows through the drywall.

They both look at it, the hazy dust crumbling to the ground. Jack pulls his hand away, flexes his knuckles in shock. They’re numb.

Kent laughs softly, darkly, and looks up at Jack with a smirk. “There he is.”

Jack stares at ruined wall, the glimpse of wooden framing inside. “I can’t.” Everything is cold. “I can’t.”

“That’s okay,” Kent whispers softly. He brushes a hand across Jack’s cheek. “We’re used to you being the disappointment.”

There’s the sound of footsteps and the loss of Parse in his periphery and Jack stares at the wall and dreams about what breathing would feel like.

An opening door a closing door.

A convulsion in his lungs.

_ You take everything from me. _

People alive in a hallway who don’t know.

_ Bitty knew. _

_ You take everything from me. _

People alive in a hallway and a body in a room that could die.

Lungs that are alive but aren’t good at it.

_ I can’t I can’t I can’t _

His mother used to make scrambled eggs every Sunday and they had too much salt.

No one ever told her.

_ Bitty knew. _

Lungs that are alive and he can die here or he can leave.

Jack is not panicking.

His throat tastes like saltwater and Kenny was the favorite son and he pushes off the ground and puts too much pressure on his injured knuckles, and he can feel the pain. He stands, and thinks about if they’ll patch up the hole in the wall or if his father even cares, and he walks out of the room.

Sometimes Jack hates crowds and sometimes he doesn’t mind them so much. It’s a big room and there’s spaces between people, but it feels like they’re closing in. Like he’s skating a shift and they all want something from him, something they can pry free.

_ You take everything from me. _

“Zimmboni!” There is a hand near Jack’s back. He thinks it’s supposed to be touching him. “Thought you were changing? We start soon, yes?”

“Where’s Bitty?” Jack’s mouth asks.

“I’m see him with Shitty, maybe. Getting ready?”

Jack bumps into someone shorter than him, then someone taller. He finds Shitty. He can always find Shitty. “Where’s Bitty?”

“What? He’s getting changed, re-picking out a fuckin’ bowtie for the hundredth time or something, I dunno.” A pause. Shitty’s eyes are narrow. “Are you okay, bro?”

“I—I should talk—where is he?”

“You’re not supposed to see him again before the ceremony, remember? Bad luck and all that shit.”

Jack’s throat tries to make different words. “I can’t—I can’t, uh—”

_ I can’t I can’t I can’t _

“Jack. Jack, you beautiful anxious Canadian motherfucker—” Jack flinches. “—please tell me you are not getting cold feet on this happiest of days.”

_ Bitty knew. _

“Because I get it, bro, but like.” Hands near Jack’s face, pushing at his cheeks. “That man is a sweet Southern angel of goodness and light, and he’s the best fuckin’ thing that’s ever happened to you, my marble Adonis, and you both deserve each other and so much happiness and I will not let you fuck this up.”

_ You deserve each other. _

“Jack?”

_ You deserve each other you deserve— _

“Jack, okay?”

Jack moves his chin.

“Great talk. Go put on your fuckin’ tux, man, I’m gonna officiate the  _ shitballs  _ outta this wedding.”

Jack walks back through the crowd.

Jack puts on his fucking tux.

_ You deserve each other. _

Jack wrote his vows on a notecard and Jack can say them out loud and Jack is in a car.

He’s driving the car down the highway and he’s thinking,  _ I shouldn’t be driving a car,  _ and he’s pulling up at a building with a sign that says  _ Hilton  _ on it and he’s checking into a room.

The heart of the panic always feels like the worst.

The come down is always the worst.

Jack isn’t sleeping. His phone buzzes and buzzes until it buzzes itself to death. He didn’t bring his charger. There’s nothing to do besides sleep, maybe, but he can’t even do that.

_ Useless,  _ says a voice that feels like Jack.  _ I should kill myself. _

_ Should I?  _ Jack asks. He looks down at his blank phone screen and tries to turn it in his hands. Can’t manage it.  _ Maybe tomorrow. _

He doesn’t sleep, but something about the sun coming up makes moving feel possible again.

Jack gets up and walks into the bathroom. He pisses, washes his hands, and forces his eyes up to look at himself in the mirror. He’s still wearing his tux. He looks away.

The person at the front desk lets him add another day to his stay with no problems, and then he gets into his car and punches the nearest grocery store into his GPS. It’s a Stop and Shop. Something hurts in Jack’s chest.

Jack buys a phone charger, a four pack of protein shakes, and a giant box of microwaveable chicken tenders, and chugs a shake before he drives back to the hotel.

When he gets back to the room, he plugs in his phone but leaves it turned off while he makes his food, staring at the slow spin of the microwave and breathing in time with the rattling noise it makes every full rotation.

_ Rattle. _

Breathe.

_ Rattle. _

Breathe.

_ Rattle. _

Bitty will never forgive him.

He left and he ruined everything and he doesn’t know what time it is, but he’s probably supposed to be at the airport right now, ready to leave for their honeymoon.

_ Rattle. _

Bitty always forgives him.

_ How can I forgive you,  _ Jack thinks. He doesn’t think about fantasies a lot, but he catches himself wishing that those soulmate stories were real. That he could tell what Bitty was feeling, that he could hear Bitty’s voice.

_ Rattle. _

Maybe he’d hear Kenny’s voice.

_ Rattle. _

Maybe Kenny would hear—

The microwave beeps.

Jack pulls his plate out, briefly setting it down so he can shake his hand out to dispel the heat from his fingers, carries it over to the bed and sits down.

His phone is already at thirty percent. It’s a good charger.

Jack stares at it and presses his fingers into the hottest part of the plate to remind himself that not moving doesn’t mean nothing hurts.

He turns the phone on and closes his eyes while the messages roll in. There are more missed phone calls from more people than he can make himself think about. Bitty texted him over ten times.

Jack shoves three quarters of a chicken tender in his mouth and looks out the window. He can see the planes leaving the airport from this hotel; he can’t remember if he did that on purpose.

It’s 10:03 am. Their flight leaves at ten-thirty, and he won’t be on it. Maybe Bitty will be.

Is Bitty that kind of person? There’s a country song about that. Dierks Bentley.

Jack wouldn’t get on a plane without Bitty.

Jack left Bitty at the altar.

_ Not the altar.  _ Jack closes his eyes and traces a finger over the ring on his left hand. He’s missing time, probing at fuzzy places his brain hisses at him for touching. It hasn’t been this bad in years. But.  _ You married him.  _ He’s pretty sure.  _ Til death do you part. _

_ I should kill myself,  _ says Jack’s voice.

_ Shut up,  _ Jack thinks. He stares at his phone. 10:27 am. Looks out the window again, watching the skyline.  _ Not yet. _

At 10:32 am, a plane vanishes behind the cloud wall. Jack closes his eyes and tries to breathe.

His phone startles him when it buzzes, putting tightness back in his chest. But it’s Bitty’s name on the screen.

**_Bittle :-) (10:36 am):_ ** _ Please sleep _

Jack’s vision goes fuzzy as he presses his fingers against the screen. He closes his eyes and feels tears against his face, thin and barely flowing and the warmest thing he’s felt in sixteen hours.

Bitty isn’t on the plane.

Jack locks his phone, curls up over the covers, and rests. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter to go!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, take the tags seriously.

Parse shows up drunk to the wedding, and Bitty is not panicking.

He’s in the kitchen, running cold water over the Rorschach painting of a burn on his left hand, because five minutes ago he was trying to fry a coconut shrimp when Lardo came in and said, “Bits, Parson’s, uh, really drunk,” and Bitty had dropped the shrimp into the oil and burned himself on the splash of it, and Lardo and Alicia had panicked a little and now here he is.

No one even fished the ruined shrimp out of the pot for him, because he has to do goddamn fucking everything himself around here.

“Lardo,” Bitty says evenly. “As my Best Person, you can’t be criminally charged for any crime you commit on my behalf, correct?”

“I do believe there’s precedent,” Lardo answers dutifully. “But a murder at a wedding’s a little too Southern Gothic even for you, babes. Now, if I smothered him between my thighs…”

Alicia snickers.

Bitty thinks,  _ You don’t know where that mouth’s been. _

He wonders if Alicia knows. He wants to say,  _ I looked up the year you got married. Can I just wait another decade until Parse expires, too?  _ Jack has her eyes, and he can kind of picture what her face would do.

His hand is numb, so he shuts off the tap and grits his teeth as the pain throbs back in through the screaming nerves. There’s been worse.

“I’ll finish the shrimp,” Alicia offers, which means effectively there won’t be any shrimp at the reception. Edible ones, anyway. “I really wish you boys would’ve let me help you find a caterer.”

Caterers are for weddings that aren’t sellable like currency.

(Jack had suggested it, six months ago. Bitty had laughed and said, “I guess you changed your mind about inviting TMZ, too.”

Jack had looked properly cowed after that. Bitty had lasted twenty whole minutes in the same room before he had to get up and press the bridge of his nose into the granite sink in the bathroom, hissing through his teeth and daring himself to break the cartilage.)

It’s not like Bitty can do anything about Parson.

There’s no universe in which Bitty can go out there and intimidate Parse into getting ahold of himself; he’ll just goad him into something violent and far less sloppy than it seems.

He’s watching a human landmine, praying nothing will brush against it and set it off.

“Want me to go get Jack?” Lardo suggests, placing a hand on Bitty’s arm.

“No,” he answers easily. “No, I told you—no seeing Jack before the ceremony.”

Bitty wonders if people are normally supposed to want to see their husbands before their wedding day. If it’s a hard rule to uphold. How often do people break it, like they just can’t bear to be apart?

Parson says something Bitty doesn’t quite catch and raucous laughter echoes from the next room in a way that sets Bitty’s teeth on edge, and he doesn’t think,  _ I need to see Jack. _

Bitty thinks about how, at the end of the day, he’s a Southern gentleman, and he values certain traditions, like not seeing your partner before your wedding, and keeping your goddamn mouth shut.

Parson seems like the kind of person who would fuck his bride in her wedding dress five minutes before her daddy was set to give her away.

Parson isn’t a landmine. He’s that little cake from  _ Alice in Wonderland  _ that says ‘eat me,’ and you think,  _ Well, if you say so,  _ and now Bitty thinks about smashing a whole slice into Jack’s face at the start of the reception and how everyone will laugh.

They should have had a more Jewish wedding. Smashing something sharp feels more appropriate. Something he can’t get in between his teeth. 

“Bitty?”

Bitty flexes his burned hand, uses the jolt of pain to clear his head. “Sorry, what?”

Lardo is watching him like maybe  _ he’s  _ the flight risk in this whole operation, which is honestly a little insulting. “I said, do you wanna go get changed now?”

Bitty checks the time. “Shit, yeah. Let’s—Alicia, can you?—yeah, thank you, okay.”

Alicia waves them off and grabs reluctantly at a shrimp, dangling over the oil like—well, like it’ll burn her. On a distant level Bitty feels bad for her, but he’s mostly focusing on sneaking through the house without going through the main room and dealing with guests.

Shitty catches them in the hallway to let them know the backyard is ready for the ceremony, and Lardo peels off with him to double-check…something about music that Bitty doesn’t have the energy to deal with, honestly, because if one more thing goes sideways today he’s going to actually lose it. So he decides to operate under the assumption that, yes, the music is fine, and he definitely didn’t just hear Shitty use the words ‘fix,’ ‘broken,’ and ‘speaker,’ all in the same question.

Bitty is not panicking.

He slips into the guest room that Bob set aside for him to change in and pulls out his tux, and it is normal for his hands to be shaking on his wedding day.

Jack should be changing right now too. Bitty closes his eyes and thinks about it, Jack’s big hands and soft almost-smile as he tucks his shirt in and does up the zipper.

His hands are probably shaking too.

They’re those kinds of people.

It takes him three times to get the knot on his bowtie right, but he tugs it into place and smiles at himself in the mirror, all teeth and big eyes. His phone tells him that he’s a little behind schedule, but no one’s come to find him yet so it’s probably okay if he takes an extra minute or two.

The general laughter and chatter from the living room dies down, which tells Bitty that the guests have been shuffled out to the backyard and he should prepare himself for Lardo to give him his cue. His hair is more of a mess than he’d like it to be, so he fusses at it compulsively until he hears the knock at the door.

His hair looks exactly the same. He says, “Come in!”

“Hey,” Lardo says, “I think Jack’s almost ready. You good?”

Bitty frowns at the mirror. “Does my hair look stupid?”

“No,” Lardo tells him, and grabs his wrist. He’s not sure she even looked at him.

They head down the hallway towards the backyard and run into Alicia on the way, clicking past them in her heels, finger pressed to her ear as she talks quietly into her cellphone. She’s speaking hurried English until she meets Bitty’s eyes and switches, unsubtly, to sloppier French.

Bitty mostly gave up on French classes after he graduated and Jack got tired of coaching him, but he still remembers what  _ ‘I’ll be home soon,’  _ sounds like. He used to hear that one a lot.

Lardo shrugs at him and shoots off a text, frowning at her phone while she apparently waits for an answer, and Bitty just shifts his weight uncomfortably, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Asking,  _ Is everything okay?  _ feels disingenuous somehow, even if it’s on the tip of his tongue.

Lardo never gets her answer, but Jack emerges from a door at the end of the hallway, looking perfectly devastating in his tux, and strides towards them. Bitty’s chest clenches and he digs his teeth into his bottom lip, biting around the smile stretching onto his face.

Lardo kisses him on the cheek and then heads out the doors to take her spot with the rest of the groomspeople, letting in a flurry of orchestra music before the doors shut again.

Jack’s bowtie is crooked. Bitty reaches up to fuss with it with a nervous laugh and breathes, “Oh, sweetpea. You look so  _ handsome,  _ I—”

Jack says something Bitty doesn’t quite catch.

Bitty’s fingers hesitate over the tie and his eyes go up to look at Jack’s face, the thin pinpricks of his pupils and the pale cream of his cheeks. “What was that?”

Jack is so beautiful. It’s a thin, harsh thing, the way he’s beautiful, like Bitty could slice his hands open on it if he dragged them against the grain. He says, “You knew.”

Kent Parson smears a sloppy stain across the things he touches.

“I did,” says Bitty.

“We deserve each other,” Jack tells him, and holds out his arm for Bitty to take, and Bitty throws open the doors.

The next track plays through the speakers, and the wedding march leads them down the aisle in easy time. Foot after foot, and Bob Zimmermann is in the audience but Kent Parson is not, and the music stops at the exact moment they reach the arbor, perfectly on cue.

Bitty says,  _ ‘Drink me,’  _ and goes down clean.

 

~*~

 

Alicia slips back into the audience halfway through Shitty’s speech about love and voluntary monogamy and the dozen other things currently making Bitty sick.

Bitty smiles with all his teeth and stares at Jack’s temple. He’d always imagined he’d cry on his wedding day, if he got to have one. He tries, now, and finds he can’t quite manage it.

“These beautiful motherfuckers have chosen to say their own vows,” Shitty says. “Bitty, my Southern cherub, if you will?”

Bitty’s vows are tucked in the interior pocket of his tux, neatly printed three weeks in advance, and he pulls them out and chokes back a bitter laugh. Lardo reaches over and rubs his back in an attempt to soothe him, like there’s some other emotion he’s drowning in.

“Jack,” he starts, flicking his eyes up to Jack’s face. “Our first real fight—and, Lord, we were barely fightin’, just caring about each other too hard—” Everyone laughs, like Bitty knew they would. “You showed up at my door and you told me, ‘We’re a team,’ and I—”

Bitty puts a fist to his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut and shakes with a near silent sob. It writhes around in him and he thinks,  _ We die with this,  _ with the breath seizing in his lungs and Jack’s cold hands, and he looks back up. “You told me we’re a team, and I promise that I’ll never forget that,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake. “I promise that everything I do is for you—for us. Win or lose, we do it together. Always.”

“Jack, do you take Bitty to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

Jack nods with a jerk of his head and says, “I do.”

Tater hands him the ring and Bitty holds out his hand, and Jack is dutiful in sliding it into place. Bitty has the visceral urge to seize Jack’s hand before he can pull it away, to crush the bones rather than have them taken back.

Shitty asks, “Jack, your vows?” and Jack takes his hands away and stares at Shitty, blinking slowly.

“Uh—I—” Jack stammers, and Bitty manages to laugh alongside everyone else.

“I’ve got a copy here, brah,” Shitty says, and pulls a notecard out of his pocket. “Gotta help out the talent, right?”

Jack takes the notecard and doesn’t laugh. He runs a thumb over it rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth, and starts to read. “Bitty. When I met you, I had no idea where that moment would take us. So much has changed since then, but I know I have you to thank for making me the person I was supposed to be. I love you.”

“There weren’t any vows in there, but I guess it counts,” Shitty chirps, over  _ aww’s  _ and cheers. “What do you think, Bits? Do you take Jack to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“How could I say no?” Bitty asks, to more laughter, and the smile on his face feels like it slithered there.

Lardo hands him the ring. He has to shove at it a little, to make it fit.

Shitty wipes at his face and tell them, “You may now kiss your partner,” and Bitty reaches up to mouth at Jack’s lips, like he can suck the poison clean.

Jack doesn’t kiss him back, but he puts his hands on Bitty’s face and the way Bitty shivers looks like it’s from all the love.

They leave back down the aisle first, to the cheering and applause of all the guests, and this is the part where people will start to wonder what, exactly, the fuck is wrong with Jack’s face.

_ Would it kill you to smile?  _ Bitty thinks, and immediately winces. He’s never seen Jack like this before. Maybe it would.

The guests follow and filter into the dining room for the reception. Bitty and Jack are supposed to make their grand entrance last, and they wait silently for the few minutes it takes for everyone to gather.

Jack tugs his arm free from Bitty’s grip.

Bitty looks up at him, useless words dying in his throat. What can he say?  _ I’m sorry?  _ He isn’t.

They watch Shitty look around, realize everyone who’s going to show up is seated, and tap on a wine glass before announcing, “Everyone, for the first time: Mr. and Mr. Bittle-Zimmermann!”

The clapping goes on for an awkward amount of time.

Bitty grabs Jack’s elbow and tugs him forward, and they take their seats at one head of the table. Handfuls of the SMH and Falconers are seated around Bob’s grand dining room table, grinning broadly at them from behind carefully arranged placards assigning their seats.

The card between Bob and Alicia, calling for Kent Parson, screams unanswered.

Jack seems to fixate on it when they sit, his eyes cold and hyper-clear.

Bitty grits his teeth and turns to Lardo on his other side to say, “Lardo, the flower arrangements look amazing!”

Lardo is watching Jack. “Uh, thanks, bro. Is…everything okay?”

“Peachy,” Bitty tells her. He shoves his voice down in pitch. “Why would you—”

“Excuse me,” Jack says, and walks out.

Bitty watches him leave with a fist curled in the table cloth, running it through his fingers, pulling it taut and collapsing it in on itself, and cheerfully announces, “I guess we’ll bring the food out when he gets back, right, y’all?”

Bob is gripping a fork in his hand with white-knuckles.

Bitty doesn’t give him the satisfaction of looking. He keeps his body turned towards Lardo and says, “Now, Lardo, be honest—how many crises did you solve today?”

Lardo starts a list. Because she is a good person, she does not say,  _ This one. _

 

~*~

 

Twenty minutes and one subtle search party later, Lardo leans into Bitty very, very close and says, “Bits…I don’t—I’m not sure if Jack is coming back.”

The table has progressed from jarringly loud, the kind of raucous behavior people use to mask how fundamentally uncomfortable they are, to funeral home silent.

_ What are we burying?  _ Bitty thinks.

He stands decisively with a cheerful clap and says, “I guess I’ll bring the food out!” Lardo starts to reach for him, but he’s already moved away. “It’ll just be a second, y’all!”

Half of the shrimp are burnt.

Bitty tosses them vindictively into the trash one by one and times his breaths to the sounds they make splatting against the paper towels and peeled shells, and does not fall apart.

“Eric,” Bob says, lumbering in through the doorway, “what’s going—”

“Just shut  _ up!”  _ Bitty hisses. He feels the spit frothing under his tongue, wonders when he turned this rabid. “How fucking dare—what’s  _ going on?  _ Where the  _ fuck  _ is Parson?”

Bob holds his hands up and presses against the wall, like he isn’t still big enough to snap Bitty in half. Even through the anger, the pain and blind fear, it still feels good in the little sick pit of his stomach he pretends he doesn’t have.

“I don’t know,” Bob says. “I—he tried to make me leave with him—he was—I wouldn’t go, and he left. He’s gone.”

“Has he—”

“He’s safe.” Alicia slips into the kitchen and leans against the counter, out of arm’s reach from either of them. She’s talking to Bob. “I got a call.”

Bitty rounds on her. “Tell me where.”

Alicia looms over him in heels, her son’s eyes and bloody lipstick and something more sincere than a mask, for all that it says nothing at all.

“No,” she tells him evenly, and Bitty has always wondered just how much of Jack came from Bob, but he knows who put the coldness in his violence.

Bitty looks away first, jaw clenched.

Jack doesn’t get to leave him here.

He pushes away from the counter, already pulling his phone out, and says, “I’m going. Don’t tell them anything.”

Bob reaches out to grab Bitty’s arm. “Eric, you can’t just—”

“For once in your goddamn life, Bob,” Bitty spits, jerking out of reach, “look at the blood on your own knuckles.”

He slips into the hallway, avoiding his friends on the way to the guest room, and types out a text to Jack as he shoves his things back into this suitcase. Then he drafts the second text for when the first one inevitably goes unanswered and hails a taxi.

They drive past the hotel from last time. Bitty wracks up ten more miles on a Zimmermann credit card before he stops the car at a new one and tips the driver in cash. Jack hasn’t answered, but there are frantic messages from half the wedding party on his phone instead, like they can make up the difference.

Bitty clears the notifications, leaving them all unread, and sends the second text. 

 

~*~

 

The hotel smells like bad sex and old socks, and it’s after the third unanswered text that Bitty thinks, for the first time that day,  _ I might have to bury him. _

Jack after a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills. Open casket, dark wood, Shitty gives the eulogy.

**_Bitty (7:53 pm):_ ** _ Please don’t hurt yourself _

Jack wrapping their rental car around a streetlamp. Closed casket. They get a nicer coffin, so there’s something to look at.

Bitty would give a good eulogy.

**_Bitty (8:12 pm):_ ** _ Please tell me you’re safe please _

Jack would say goodbye to him. Jack would do that.

Bitty would hate him for doing it.

**_Bitty (8:47 pm):_ ** _ Just tell me you’re safe please you never have to talk to me again just be okay please _

Bitty used to have nightmares about finding the body.

It was always bloody—bloodier than Jack would make it, and that was how Bitty would know it wasn’t real.

Blood on the walls and sticky on Bitty’s hands, and Bitty would wake up and touch Jack’s face and hate him. Hate him so much and not even for the dying, but because Bitty had to  _ know. _

**_Bitty (9:02 pm):_ ** _ Jack please _

Kent Parson had to find the body.

There wasn’t any blood so it wasn’t really the same.

Bitty used to watch Jack sleeping and touch the side of his face and think,  _ If you do it again do it with pills. Do it in Montreal. Don’t let me see. _

And he’d crawl out of bed and lock himself in the bathroom and sob until he was empty.

**_Bitty (9:17 pm):_ ** _ Tell me where you are so someone can help you _

Bitty takes off his tuxedo and hangs each piece tidily in the closet, careful to keep all the lines crisp and neat, folds his boxer-briefs back up in his suitcase, and walks into the bathroom. He turns on the tub faucet as hot as he can stand it, and then hotter than that, and plugs the drain.

All the lights are off, but the bathroom has an exterior window that lets in the glow of a streetlamp. He closes the blinds as tight as they’ll go.

**_Bitty (9:39 pm):_ ** _ Please tell someone you are okay _

The water is steaming; Bitty can feel it in the sudden humidity, the heaviness in his chest.

He wants it to boil off his skin.

**_Bitty (9:43 pm):_ ** _ I love you _

Bitty steps into the tub and sinks under the water. His face is tilted up so he can breathe but it’s hard anyway, with the heat, and it takes every inch of his lungs, and his burned hand is screaming. The sound all around him is muffled and strange, like the world is happening near him but not to him.

It’s pitch black, so he can keep his eyes open.

Water is supposed to mean things. Rebirth, cleansing, purity.

Bitty’s water is black and hot and he is not sorry for the secrets he kept or the way it got easier every time he practiced Jack’s eulogy in his dreams.

_ This is not who you were supposed to become,  _ he thinks, and closes his eyes.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up in tepid water, shivers crawling along his skin. His eyes have adjusted to the dark and he can see faint outlines of the things around him. Like he lives here now, belongs in it. He feels uncomfortably naked, like there’s something watching him and it can’t figure out if it likes what it sees.

What would?

The water drains loud and slow, gurgling jarringly in the late night—early morning? How long was he asleep?—quiet, and Bitty shivers even after he wraps himself in a towel. His phone died at some point—he plugs it in near the bed with his heart in his throat, watching with shaking fingers as texts and missed calls and voicemails roll in.

His mother called at eleven. She wants to know if he still has Moo Maw’s chicken casserole recipe, maybe, and if he does could he sent it to her when he gets the chance?

Moo Maw’s chicken casserole recipe is on an index card in Providence.

Bitty replays the message six times and deletes it.

Googles how to undelete voicemails.

For the first time in six years, wishes he was living the life she thinks he is.

Deletes the voicemail again, puts his phone face down on the nightstand, and goes to sleep.

 

~*~

 

His phone alarm wakes him at eight AM.  _ Get to the airport!! :)  _ it says, for the honeymoon. Bitty turns it and the next four alarms off too.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up at 8:13 AM in a heart pounding panic and drives to the airport.

 

~*~

 

Jack doesn’t come.

 

~*~

 

The plane takes off at exactly 10:30, which would have made Jack happy. Those are the kinds of things he’ll always know—dirt under his fingernails. Like how if Jack is alive, he hasn’t slept. So Bitty pulls out his phone, thumbs trailing slowly over the keys.

**_Bitty (10:36 am):_ ** _ Please sleep _

Maybe it’s the only thing he can do. Nudge little messages into the void, hope Jack sees and remembers to take care of himself.

It’s not how he imagined becoming his husband’s keeper.

There’s nowhere else to be besides the airport, so Bitty stays at the gate and stares down his phone. It’s filled with messages he should answer from people who care about him or need him to care about them, which aren’t the same thing but live in the same spaces in his heart, and he can’t make himself do anything about either.

He ends up on Twitter instead, scrolling through two days of feed backlog.

Taylor Swift broke up with another boyfriend. There’s probably a story there.

 

~*~

 

**_Sweetpea <3 (3:37 pm): _ ** _ Hilton 311 _

Bitty stares at the text with flared nostrils. It occurs to him that he hasn’t eaten in almost thirty hours. He rolls his suitcase over to the nearest restaurant, orders a triple cheeseburger, and eats the whole thing. The fries are under salted.

**_Bitty (4:17 pm):_ ** _ I’m on my way _

The closest Hilton is a five minute taxi ride away, and Bitty spends it chatting with the driver.

“What are you in the city for?” the man asks, graciously switching to English after Bitty butchers some rudimentary French.

Bitty presses his temple to the window and watches the airport blur away behind them. “I’m getting married tomorrow.”

“That’s fantastic!” the driver says. He beams at Bitty and winks through the rear view mirror. “Lucky fiancé.”

“Yeah,” Bitty says. He thinks about rolling the window down, reaching out and grabbing at tree branches as they blur past. His hands stay folded in his lap, where they belong. “Lucky him.”

 

~*~

 

Jack doesn’t answer Bitty’s knocking right away and Bitty thinks,  _ He told me where he was so I could find the body,  _ and he’s never felt anger like this before, like it could boil him so thoroughly he doesn’t even feel the dread and then Jack opens the door and it will always feel like this, held hostage by the fucking relief of seeing Jack alive and the way it feels to say his name at least one more time.

“Jack,” Bitty chokes out, and shoulders his way into Jack’s arms. “Jack, sweetheart—”

Jack says, “Don’t touch me.”

Bitty’s back hits the door, pushing it shut. He hurts too much to feel it.

Jack is in boxers and his dress shirt from the wedding, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He asks, “Were you ever going to tell me?”

The chain lock on the door presses sharply into Bitty’s shoulder. He leans into it and says, “No.”

Jack’s pupils are pinpricks of disbelief and his hands are fists, the kind that shake and taste like fear when Bitty kisses the knuckles. “You—Crisse, Eric, what’s  _ wrong  _ with you?”

It’s his captain voice. The one that watched a traumatized eighteen year old have a panic attack and told him to  _ get with the program. _

Bitty isn’t eighteen anymore. Bodies are weapons but not the only ones.

“Nothing,” he says. “Fuck you. I—I was protecting you! Why would you ever—”

_ “Protecting  _ me?” Jack throws his arms up and turns away, pacing towards the window. Like looking at Bitty is the hardest thing he’s ever tried to do. “I didn’t need  _ protection,  _ Eric, I—”

“Stop calling me that,” Bitty hisses.

“—I’m not a child! You think I couldn’t handle it?”

“You  _ couldn’t!”  _  Bitty gestures at the hotel room, the ruined sheets and empty protein shake bottles upended in the trash. “You  _ didn’t.” _

Jack turns back to him, shoulders squared and eyes hot. “This is _you._ You’re what I couldn’t handle.”

Bitty’s stomach drops. His mouth is too dry to form words. He goes to sit on the edge of the bed, where he can pretend Jack isn’t looking at him. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you. I couldn’t—I didn’t think he’d—”

“He takes everything from me.” Jack sits down at the other end. “He—he took my dad and now he’s taking you, and you fucking—”

Bitty’s head snaps up. “He  _ took  _ him? Are you seriously saying—”

“Of course he did,” Jack spits. “Of course he—he always  _ wanted _ —he had to be the fucking favorite, couldn’t stand that my dad might—”

“Oh my God,” Bitty says. “Oh my fucking God. I can’t—” He tries to look at him, looks back away. “Jack, what the  _ fuck _ —?”

Jack snaps, “What?”

Bitty’s hands are shaking. He stares at them like they might stop. “He was nineteen. He was a  _ child.  _ And you think—and you think it’s  _ his  _ fault your dad—”

Bitty cuts off helplessly.

Slowly, too slowly, Jack asks, “What’re you saying?”

There’s something cold growing in Bitty’s stomach. He feels sick and like he’s forgotten how to be a person and like he’s not sure if he wants to remember. “Jack,” he says helplessly. His eyes are wide, blurry. “Jack—what kind of man looks—what kind of  _ person  _ fucks his  _ nineteen- _ year-old son’s ex-boyfriend? Who looks at that and thinks—”

“Don’t,” Jack begs.

“You were barely out of rehab and Kent found your  _ body  _ and—and—” Bitty gasps for air, tries to push the words back down but he can’t, can’t do anything but keep going. “And your father looks at that and thinks—he wants to  _ fuck  _ him, and I hate Kent Parson, Jack, I really do, for so many  _ fucking  _ things, but this—for  _ this _ —?”

“You don’t know anything!” Jack pushes off the bed, paces to the wall, slams himself into the wall. Fists first, his head shoved against the stucco, whole body shaking. “You don’t—you don’t know what it’s like to tell Kenny  _ no.” _

_ I did,  _ Bitty thinks.  _ For you. Everything for you. _

And then,  _ I hate you. _

Not for the first time. But enough.  _ I hate you,  _ again.  _ I’m not sorry. _

“I can’t be around you,” he says, and it sounds far away to his own ears but it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. “I can’t do this. I love you, and I can’t fucking do this.”

Jack is supposed to beg him to stay. He can’t even do that much right. He stares at the wall and asks, “Where are you going?”

Bitty readjusts his grip on his suitcase and pauses with his hand on the door. “Are you sure you wanna know?” he asks softly, and watches himself turn the knob.

 

~*~

 

There are no taxis outside the hotel, so Bitty calls an Uber and sits down on the curb to wait. He pulls out his phone and dials with shaking fingers. She answers on the second ring.

“Dicky? Goodness, hi, sweetheart! I wasn’t expectin’ a call, is everything okay?”

Bitty closes his eyes. “Um, hey, Mama,” he says. “I’m travelin’ for work right now, but I think I remember the recipe if you need it.”

Mama says, “That’d be perfect!” and grabs herself paper and a pen. She sounds so happy, like there’s nothing better he could ever do.

Bitty drags his fingers across the concrete, and recites the whole thing from memory. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is completed, but more in the series is on the way <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still going to hell and I'm still [on Tumblr!](http://www.yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com)


End file.
